Imminent Danger
by nosleep3
Summary: After Catherine shoots Vincent and arrests her father, she and Vincent each reflect on what they've done. Was any of it right or justifiable? How was this path carved, and where will it lead? Takes place immediately after the events of episode 2x08.
1. Imminent Danger

Imminent Danger

_I shot him._

Catherine had never felt so exhausted in her life. Between arranging, adapting, and conducting the sting operation against Reynolds (she could not bring herself to think of him as her father at the moment), the arrest, the physical strain of enduring a car crash, everything that went so wrong when Vincent appeared, and then the horrible process of booking Agent Reynolds, confronting him, having to get her story straight with Gabe, and then, to top it all off, _paperwork…_Catherine felt like she hadn't slept in a full week.

This was only partly true. She had slept, but nothing more than stolen power naps since Thanksgiving.

_No. I am not thinking about Thanksgiving. I'm not thinking about anything. I am going to sleep._

How many hours did she spend slaving over that damned report? Four? Six? Enough that she hadn't made it back to her apartment until just before dawn, at any rate. Gabe tried to send her home after her brief, tearful meltdown outside of lock-up, but their work, she reminded him, was not done. There had been the audio recording to go over, the preliminary report from the bomb squad, and their own version of events to concoct, memorize, and type up. It helped, she thought, that throughout most of her written report, she referred to Reynolds as "the actor" or "the suspect." More distance between her and that whole _father _thing.

There was nothing she could do about matching her story with whatever statement Reynolds would give in the morning unless he gave it directly to her, which would not happen. Catherine was not only the arresting officer, but the driver in a vehicular accident; she'd also discharged her weapon. Standard procedure dictated that someone else take the arrestee's statement. Catherine herself should have already given a statement to Internal Affairs about the crash and the shooting; thankfully, Gabe arranged for that to be delayed.

The report, once written, had to be checked and rechecked for every possible inconsistency, any hole in the story that would expose the true extent of Catherine's, Gabe's, or their other friends' involvement in the situation. The official narrative had to hold up to intense scrutiny; the mayor, who'd taken a recent interest in Beast-related cases and the detectives who worked them, would set her dogs on the faintest possibility of a trail. Catherine did her best to protect herself, her friends…and Vincent.

No matter what was going on, who got hurt, or whose lives or careers were in danger, it always came back to protecting Vincent.

_I shot him._

She remembered a conversation they'd had so many months ago—had it been a year already?—when Vincent told her that the day he finally met her, the day she'd stormed into his warehouse, pointing a gun at him and demanding that he show himself, was the best day of his life.

The night she fired it had to be the worst. For both of them.

So much. They'd been through _so much,_ especially here lately. All the heartache, the months of searching, the amnesia, the lies and secrets, the Beast murders. The fear that Vincent had died every single time another arsonist blew up some building. Months of trying to rebuild trust in each other and fall in love all over again. Catherine had made several mistakes in the process, but the relationship was progressing. Now it was all gone.

As six AM turned to seven and then eight, Catherine mentally approached the shooting from every angle she could think of. How she had reasoned with Vincent beforehand about the merits of her side of the moral dilemma. How she believed in the law, in the system, to exact justice for everyone Muirfield had victimized. How she'd given Vincent an ultimatum: _me or your revenge._ Those weren't the words she'd used, but when you got right down to it, wasn't that the choice she wanted him to make?

Somehow Catherine's overwhelmed mind finally stopped thinking in terms of Vincent not choosing her over his desires and started looking at the situation as a police academy training scenario. What makes a clean shoot "clean." Draw your weapon—but keep it lowered—when you have a reasonable suspicion of potential danger. Never point your weapon at a crowd or fire into one. Never fire a warning shot; all bullets go somewhere, so you're more likely to hurt an innocent bystander than anything else. Point your weapon at the suspect when someone, including yourself, is in clear and present danger. Fire at the suspect when the danger is imminent. Don't aim for limbs, because that won't stop the suspect from defending himself or harming his victim. Don't shoot to kill, but do aim to _stop_ the suspect.

That last part was a philosophical distinction, not a physical one. The academy trained everyone to aim for the chest. Marksmanship qualification scores were determined by grouping and center mass—how many bullets penetrated the target in the heart.

Desperation and training made Catherine fire. Her badge gave her permission to do it. But love made her aim for Vincent's stomach instead of his heart and lungs. She even avoided his liver.

She was _supposed_ to aim for the chest or head. If it had been any other perp, she would be facing questions about why she hadn't followed procedure. Her arrestee's life was in immediate danger from an outside threat while in police custody, so the situation certainly called for the use of deadly force. A kill would have been justified according to regulations. Because philosophically and procedurally, in spite of the moral grey area and emotional turmoil you might or might not find yourself in afterward, if you're a cop, and if someone's life is in danger, you're allowed to kill the bad guy.

_Vincent's life is always in danger. So is mine._

How many times had Vincent killed people in the course of saving Catherine's life? He'd been doing it for ten years. It wasn't a premeditated thing. Usually. Technically. There wasn't a killing agenda back _before_ Vincent disappeared, no list of targets; he simply had a knack for showing up in the nick of time when Catherine was overwhelmed by too many assailants. He was defending her. He just happened to have too much strength and not quite enough restraint to prevent himself from killing the attackers. Catherine had never complained about it before. She'd definitely been freaked out by it, but she never ruled it a relationship deal-breaker or called his humanity into question back then. She had told him that she loved every part of him, and meant it. Was she excusing the violence and animalism away back then because she thought Vincent had poor control as the Beast?

_No, not really._

Vincent's control was constantly improving long before he was captured, but his kills never stopped because the attempts on his and Catherine's lives never stopped. How many times had they both had to fight off Muirfield agents or other factions? The truth was, even though Vincent wasn't a cop, Cat had held him up to the same philosophical standard she and the state of New York held herself: sometimes, if someone's life is in danger, you're allowed to kill the bad guy.

_And my…Reynolds was the bad guy. He just wasn't trying to kill __**me.**_

After all her recent haranguing of Vincent that killing people and seeking revenge robbed him of his humanity, Catherine took a moment now to wonder about Bob Reynolds's humanity. His logic almost made sense, if you didn't examine it too closely: by ordering the murder of all the Beasts, he was simply euthanizing rabid, dangerous animals. Catherine had done that once herself, back when she was a patrol cop and a stray dog suddenly attacked a kid right in front of her. Eliminating a public menace was the value rational action to take—the ethical thing to do. After all, Reynolds had a hand in creating the Beasts, so he ought to take some responsibility. But those beasts were victims, too, and people, even if they were bad people. By manipulating one of his victims into carrying out all these murders for him before arranging that assassin's murder as well, Reynolds had utilized an instrumentally rational action—a means-end logic—that was entirely devoid of moral value. Thirty years after the first time, he was _still _creating a monster to do terrible things, and then trying to justify destroying his creation by calling it monstrous. Reynolds sold his soul to play God, systematically stealing Vincent's humanity out from under him.

He just hid it really well with that bashful, protective birth-father routine.

_And I've been playing right into it. Not entirely, but enough to alienate Vincent._

Catherine thought about what Vincent had said: that Reynolds would get out of jail and just keep doing this, keep trying to destroy him all over again. Hadn't the weasel of a man been on his way out of the country? A one-way ticket to some place that wouldn't extradite to the United States but would still allow him to maintain control of his off-shore financial assets? He was running for his life, yes, but he was also headed some place where he could continue to pull a variety of well-placed strings.

A place from which he could still have Vincent killed, or anyone he wanted, really.

Maybe _imminent_ danger didn't necessarily have to refer to _immediate_ danger to be critical to Vincent's circumstances. Wouldn't it still qualify as inevitable, though? If Reynolds could reach out to bomb makers and super-soldier contract killers while under the regulation and scrutiny he faced as a federal agent, was it out of the realm of possibility that he would be able to do the same while incarcerated? Organized crime syndicates nowadays were structured specifically to be run from inside a prison cell. That included assassination plots. It was the kind of thing that would take some serious planning and a highly intelligent scumbag attorney. Reynolds didn't exactly have the support of a gang or crime family behind him, but he had already proven himself to be well connected and a master of the long game. Not to mention, now that he knew there was still a Beast out there looking for blood, he was highly motivated to eliminate Vincent from the face of the earth.

Yes, Vincent may have been trying to exact revenge on some level, but as long as Robert Reynolds was still alive, Vincent Keller was certainly in imminent, unavoidable danger.

_And I shot him._

Neither sleep nor tears would come. Nine o'clock became ten, and Catherine was due at the precinct in two hours to give her statement to Internal Affairs. Subdued, Cat rose from her rumpled bed to shower and prepare for the coming storm. She lifted the window sash from the sill, gazing across the street at the nearest rooftop without much hope.


	2. Insufficient Coverage

**A/N: I got a request to continue from Vincent's perspective, and I was inspired. Thanks for the feedback!**

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Insufficient Coverage

"I'd love to be able to say I can't believe she did this," Tori said, examining Vincent's exit wound with her untrained eye. Vincent had injected himself with a blood clotting agent in addition to a local anesthetic. Once the bleeding stopped and a wave of his most sensitive metal detector confirmed the absence of shrapnel, he sewed up the entry wound himself to show Tori how it was done. All he needed was a little help stitching up the wound he couldn't reach.

Naturally, Tori couldn't just sew him up and leave it at that. She had to give twenty dollars' worth of her two cents on the matter. As if Vincent hadn't spent the better part of an hour pondering how Catherine could do this to him.

"It's a clean through-and-through," Vincent said, preferring not to acknowledge Tori's remarks about Catherine, at least not out loud. He handed her another syringe of anesthesia and pointed to the proper location for the injection. "Should be simple to stitch, but you have to handle the needle with the clamps, not your fingers." He looked at her quizzical reflection in the mirror she'd brought down for him. "Infection." But it wasn't just infection. He wasn't entirely sure if the gloves she was wearing would prevent him from having a reaction to her touch. If it happened, it happened, and they would learn to deal with it, but he'd at least like to have his wound treated first.

"Oh." Tori looked at the wound while she administered the numbing agent and decided to begin her stitches from the right side and work her way left. "Do I need to make little exes?"

Vincent blinked at the word 'exes.' He didn't like the way it sounded. "No, just do exactly what I did." He lay face down on his kitchen countertop, fighting against the agony of the freshly sewn entry wound pressing into the hard surface. That local anesthetic metabolized quickly. He wondered if the blood coagulant would wear off just as fast.

"I mean, it just seems like she has no respect for who we are and what we can do…" Tori was saying, carefully making her first stitch with the curved needle.

Vincent tried to tune her banter out by focusing on what was physically wrong with him—an odd reversal of standard ER diversionary tactics. Sewing up the entry and exit wounds was important, but it was just whip-stitching the outside—a band-aid solution—not healing from within. He could ascertain several important bits of data based on his own medical training, but he needed ultrasound imaging of the injury, maybe an x-ray in case of chipped bone fragments, and he needed these things sooner rather than later.

_The bullet missed the major organs: heart, lungs, liver. I'm fairly sure the bullet missed my pelvic bone. But there may still be damage to my stomach, intestines, kidneys, or spleen. I can't deal with those on my own, and Tori can't operate on me._

"I think I'm going to need more help," Vincent said, interrupting Tori's quiet rant.

Tori, who spent most of her life in boarding schools, condos, and mansions before now, had no idea where to go for things like black market antibiotics or unlicensed secret surgical clinics. Vincent might know where these things were in the city he'd spent so many years in—if his memory hadn't been wiped. "What do I do?"

The first thing that came to Vincent's mind slipped so easily from his mouth he didn't even realize he said it out loud. "Call Catherine." It wasn't even a conscious thought, really. He prided himself on being self-sufficient, but when that was impossible, his instinct was to go to her, even if he didn't remember why, even if he didn't remember it being his instinct before this very moment. Catherine would protect him, because she loved him, and because that's just what she did.

Except…

"What?" Tori recoiled, accidentally tugging the thread and Vincent's skin along with it. He winced. "Sorry, sorry. I just…really? Catherine?" She angled herself to try looking at Vincent's face. "You do remember she's the reason your blood is all over your kitchen, right?" Tori hated having to state the obvious, but, "She _shot _you, Vincent!"

Vincent didn't look at Tori. _I know she did._

_After I crashed the car while she was driving it._

_And didn't check to see if she was injured._

_And tried to kill her father in front of her with my bare hand._

"Just stitch me up," Vincent groaned. Pain around the area being stitched wasn't a good sign. "I think the local is wearing off."

Tori resumed her work, trying to keep her grumbling to herself so she could hurry up and get this done. Vincent occupied himself with his own medical and ballistic analysis.

_Clean through and through. The entry wound is approximately the same size as the exit wound, which means a fast moving bullet—lots of gun powder in the round. Wound is too big and bullet was too fast to be from her 9mm; she must have used her Springfield .40 caliber long barrel. The longer barrel reduces recoil, improves aim. No shrapnel, which means she used regular rounds; hollow points would have exploded, and I'd have a much bigger exit wound. She missed all the major organs._

_Cops don't usually aim for the stomach. Catherine never does, I don't think. She doesn't miss, either. She's an excellent shot._

_She missed all my major organs on purpose._

"Can't we go to someone else?" Tori tried, tying off the final stitch and snipping away the excess thread.

_Someone else. _There was no doubt in Vincent's mind, Tori wanted to be his _someone else,_ or was at least willing to give it a try. It would be a lie to say he hadn't thought about it, that day in the apple orchard when she kissed him, and he kissed her back. Maybe there was even a certain merit to the idea. He wasn't in love with her or anything, not the way he was with Catherine, or at all, really. But with Tori, there wouldn't be that constant refrain of "your humanity" this and "your memory" that, peppered with Gabe Lowen's little "flatline" rejoinder. With Tori, Vincent wouldn't have to worry if the word "humanity" had stopped being code for "morality" and started being code for "genetic deformity." Tori was fine with Vincent the way he was, because that's also the way she was, and she'd decided to stop fighting it and embrace it.

But disparaging Catherine all evening wasn't endearing Tori to Vincent. He needed time and space to recover from the mental shock of what had happened, the fury, all the emotional mess that came with getting hurt by someone who loved you—much the same way Catherine had needed time and space when he'd hurt _her_. A listening ear was helpful, but Vincent couldn't work out his own thoughts with Tori pushing her opinions, her outrage, and her I-Am-Beast-Hear-Me-Roar enthusiasm on him. There was a time for that, but it wasn't right now. It just felt every bit as aggressive and irritating as when Catherine had pushed her "destined love" on him, or when Condor—_that rat bastard_—ordered him to stop remembering or feeling anything. It wasn't up to anyone else to tell him how to feel, and he wished everyone would stop trying.

"What about JT?" Tori suggested, reaching for the iodine to pour over the wound. "Aren't you guys good friends or something?"

"Mhmm," Vincent replied, recalling that JT had told him they'd spent ten years together living off the grid. His best friend, apparently—he'd have to be to live like that when he didn't have to. JT would probably know about underground clinics.

_Or not. He lived with a doctor. And he had a job, with health insurance for himself, probably._

"I mean, if Catherine cares so much," Tori was saying, "why isn't she here doing this instead of me?"

An _excellent_ question. One Vincent had been asking himself tonight, especially since Catherine had yet to even call to check on him. But he knew the answer, and as much as he hated to admit it, it was reasonable.

"She's a cop," Vincent replied. "She just arrested a federal agent. A lot of people are probably all over her right now, demanding answers, or following her outright." And she was probably lying to every single one of them.

The trouble with Catherine was that she had too much faith in the legal system, if by faith you meant confidence in its ability to function according to the spirit of its own rules. That was why she and Gabe Lowen thought incarceration was synonymous with justice, and that's why they believed arresting Agent Reynolds should be enough. Not exactly a surprise, coming from a cop and an ADA. But Vincent knew Catherine was aware that a justice system structured as an impartial bureaucracy, even if it's functioning perfectly, can result in concrete injustices at the individual level—that's _why _she started lying in the first place. What's right is not always legal, and what's legal is not always right. Rigid, black and white rules didn't account for the grey of complications and extenuating circumstances, and what was Vincent if not the most unusual, complicated circumstance on the planet? Her legal system wasn't designed to protect Vincent, Tori, or anyone else cursed with this DNA. Not that the legal and political systems were working so _damn _perfectly, if Reynolds was able to run his own personal hit squad from behind a federal desk, and if a government contractor was turning innocent people and known criminals into Beasts with zero legal consequences.

Of course Catherine knew all these things—that was why she'd covered Vincent's tracks, and JT's, and probably some other people Vincent used to be close to but couldn't remember. That's why she was spinning a web of lies right now instead of sending S.W.A.T. to storm his houseboat hours ago: to protect _him_. He didn't ask her to do it or threaten her if she didn't. Catherine did whatever she could to cover up for him, even if it went against her core belief in the law, even if it wasn't enough or she screwed something up, even while she was calling his humanity into question. Come hell or high water, protecting Vincent was Catherine's priority. She'd proven that time and again. It was what she did for the man she loved.

_For me._

But she had to _know, _didn't she? She had to know that her legal system wasn't going to work the way she thought it would this time. What was the logic in arresting Reynolds for his crimes, and for laying the responsibility of Vincent's crimes on Reynolds's head, when Catherine had been helping conceal Vincent's actions in the first place? Catherine couldn't have this both ways—making Reynolds answer for what he'd done but not revealing what he'd actually done and who else was involved. Her case wouldn't hold up under the weight of a federal investigation, let alone at trial, if she shrouded all the relevant information in lies. Any detective worth their salary should know that, but after so many successful smokescreens and deflections, Catherine had lost her objectivity. Reynolds wasn't exactly a low-profile case, either; a federal agent involved in a far-reaching, thirty-year conspiracy would attract attention from all corners, public, private, and covert. Some of them would be after every little detail, and some would be scrambling to cover up the fact that they'd known of, even green-lit or funded, Project Muirfield.

There was an appropriate expression, 'When the shit hits the fan, it blows back on everybody.' There was no way Catherine's plan to make her father face public justice would work without implicating _someone_ besides Reynolds. And there were several people involved in all these cover-ups. Not just pyromaniacs and power-hungry Congressmen, either; good people trying to do the right thing, even if it wasn't the legal thing. Catherine couldn't protect them all. Vincent wasn't even sure she could protect herself. Not from this.

_None of this would be happening if she'd just let me kill Reynolds. _

No, that wasn't true, and he might as well stop whining and just admit it. Killing Reynolds would have been satisfying, and it might even have shut down whatever was left of Muirfield. For a while. But there would still be a cover-up and a mess to clean, just a different kind: a bizarre and highly publicized murder, one that would have the mayor and the FBI breathing down Catherine's neck and howling about epithelial evidence of cross-species DNA, never mind the field day they'd have once they learned Reynolds was her biological father. Maybe Catherine wouldn't have been able to protect herself or Vincent from that kind of heat, either. Maybe she'd have been arrested as an accessory to murder. There was nothing he could do rescue her from a situation like that.

Vincent needed to stop looking for the perfect scenario that solved all their problems; it didn't exist. That's just the way it was, the only way it could ever be, probably for as long as Vincent lived, no matter what he remembered from his past or what he tried to do with his life. It didn't matter if he and Catherine got married and settled down in a Canadian suburb or if he broke all contact and hid himself in a cabin in the Swiss Alps; the secrets, the history, the love, and the Beast would still be there. Eventually someone would use one person's vulnerabilities to manipulate or hurt the other, and it would start all over again. All roads led to broken hearts and blood on the floor.

"I suppose you're right," Tori muttered, taping down the gauze dressing over the wound. She wiped away little droplets and puddles of iodine. "What do you need me to do now?"

"Ice," Vincent moaned, trying to bury his face in a kitchen towel.

Tori quickly opened a fresh latex glove and went to the freezer to fill it. All she knew about emergency medicine was what she'd learned from a long-ago Red Cross CPR and First Aid course and whatever was on those medical drama shows she sometimes watched when she was bored. She thought ice was just something Vincent wanted for the pain.

Vincent didn't tell her the problem wasn't just pain. It was heat. He could feel it spreading through his abdomen, slow and terrible, while the rest of his body began to grow cold. His breathing was becoming shallow, his pulse rapid, and he would bet that his skin was clammy and his blood pressure was falling. Tori could likely hear his heartbeat, but she wouldn't understand what these things meant or even that she was supposed to watch for them. But Vincent understood. His body was going into hypovolemic shock.

_Internal bleeding._

"Turn me over," Vincent ordered, trying to push himself up. Tori rushed to his side to help, noticing that he'd broken into a cold sweat and he wasn't transforming. "Elevate my feet about 30 centimeters. Get me a blanket."

Tori looked at his face, alarmed by the weakness in his voice and the paling skin. She obeyed, panic giving her an inhuman speed she hadn't expected. She wasn't sure that would be enough, though. As Tori tucked the blanket under the edges of Vincent's body, she let out a small gasp. Blood seeped from the bandage covering his entry wound—too much blood for a wound that had been stitched closed. Ice spilled uselessly to the floor.

"Call JT," Vincent mumbled, starting to feel dizzy. He coughed into his towel, body clenching with every abrupt, agonizing movement. Scarlet stains bloomed across the white terrycloth. A thread of blood, stomach acid, and saliva dangled between the cloth and his lips. Glassy-eyed, Vincent stared at his blood, fighting to control his rising panic. Emergency surgery would be necessary to repair his intestines. But first he needed IV-administered fluids, epinephrine, and a blood transfusion to stabilize his blood pressure and get the blood flowing properly, and he needed them _right now,_ or his brain and organs would start to die.

He tried to tell Tori this. Tried to tell her how to save him. But his voice was gone, and the world was going dark. He could hear her on the phone, so far away, yelling at someone.

_Get help now,_ he thought, his mind drifting away.

_Call Catherine._


	3. Inadequate Provision

**A/N: I wasn't expecting the story to take this direction, but it did. I will update the story description accordingly. Next chapter will be up tomorrow.**

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Inadequate Provision

_This can NOT be happening._

JT paced the floor, waiting for headlights to shine through the windows.

The decision to have Vincent brought here rather than go to him had been one JT found himself ill-prepared to make. When Tori's frenzied shouts over the phone resolved themselves into a panicky but coherent description of a gunshot wound, shock, and what sounded like barely adequate field medicine, JT realized he was the only person in that conversation capable of making medical decisions for Vincent, prepared or not.

"Can you get him into your car? Good. Bring him straight to me, and _do not stop._"

This way made more sense to JT, if only because he still had Vincent's old medical equipment handy, a few recent acquisitions, not to mention a highly valued collection of medical reference books. There was no way to know what Vincent had on his houseboat or how much of it would be useful. His place had one more advantage: he'd had the foresight, several weeks prior, to obtain and store a pint of Vincent's blood for exactly this kind of emergency. The real trick had been finding a way to keep it secured without it being exposed to bacteria.

Not that any of this was good enough. JT Forbes was a biochemist and a hacker. Not a surgeon. Not a field medic, even a crappy one. If you wanted some medication created or blood analyzed, he could do it for you; access to India's missile defense system, he was your man. But when it came to providing actual medical assistance, JT's experience came strictly from what Vincent had managed to teach him over the course of the last decade when they experimented on rats in the name of seeking a cure, or when Vincent got bored and felt like he needed to practice his doctoring skills, or when they wanted to make fun of TV medical dramas.

JT examined several books on a card table open to key pages he thought he might need. _Trauma Surgery _was opened to page 397, "Bone and metal fragments, recognition and removal." _Anatomy and Physiology _had been flipped open to page 104, "Gastro-intestinal tract," with a bookmark on page 183, "Circulatory system." _When There is No Doctor, _officially the scariest title in the collection, actually had the most useful information for diagnosing injuries and temporarily treating them. As with all first aid books, though, the underlying assumption was that you would be able to get the patient to some kind of medical facility _eventually. _Not an option today.

_Headlights. They're here._

JT barely looked at Tori as he pushed a wheeled cart—the closest thing he had to a stretcher—to the rear passenger side of the car and flung the door open. His friend lay inside, wrapped in a blanket, feet resting on the armrest of the other door. Blood stained the corner of Vincent's mouth.

"Jesus, Vince."

Tori helped him maneuver Vincent onto the cart, into the building, and onto the bar. Several lamps had already been moved into place around the makeshift treatment area, and the card table loaded with JT's books also held a tray of surgical instruments, small bottles, and syringes.

"Do you know what you're doing?" Tori asked nervously.

JT didn't answer her right away. With one last look at his books, he sent a mental prayer to the Great Whatever in the Sky, popped the safety cap off an Epi-Pen, and stabbed his best friend in the thigh.

The epinephrine worked quickly; Vincent gasped for air, his yellow eyes flying open and searching wildly around the room. He tried to sit up, but the combination of restraining hands and a terrible pain in his side kept him down.

_"Catherine!" _he choked.

Tori looked away, her unspoken question answered.

"Vincent," JT shouted, "it's me, it's JT. You're at our—at my house. We're gonna fix you up, but I need your help. Look at me." He waited for Vincent to find his eyes. "I need you to keep the Beast in check. Do you understand? Can you do that with Tori here?"

Vincent nodded, trying to calm himself. _JT. My friend._

"Take these," JT said, handing Tori a pair of oddly-shaped serrated scissors. "Cut his pants off."

"Are you _kidding me?"_ Tori exclaimed. The little man looked serious, though, pouring a bottle of isopropyl alcohol into a bowl and scrubbing his hands together inside it. She noticed a nearby saline bag and IV drip, waiting to be put to use.

_He's not kidding. He's going to operate._

Not wanting to waste any more time, Tori put the scissors to work, watching as JT put his blue neoprene gloves on. She wasn't in love with Vincent any more than he was with her, and she hadn't forgotten that he wasn't exactly a saint. When her new, animal hormones weren't shutting off her brain, she knew better than to try to compete for the attention of a man so obviously hung up on someone else, even if it was a woman she didn't much care for. But Vincent was important to her. Moreover, Tori was not the frivolous, snobby debutante people automatically saw when they looked at her, and she wasn't about to let anyone accuse her of being useless in a time of crisis.

"Okay, buddy, I've got to find a vein and get this IV line in you," JT said. Vincent's muscles were so tense that the veins were standing rigid along his arm. JT opened an alcohol pad. "I haven't done this in a long time, so it's probably gonna hurt, and I might have to do it more than once. Don't kill me, all right?"

"I won't," Vincent whispered, attempting to regulate his breathing while JT scrubbed the hell out of his arm. "You'll…do fine…"

"Tori," JT said, not looking at her as he opened a package containing a sterile PIV line. "There's a large standing mirror in the bedroom—hallway, first door on the left. You're going to have to bring that in here and angle it over Vincent's body." Vincent was hissing in pain, but JT managed to insert the cannula in his arm and withdraw the metal trocar on the first try. It looked close enough to correct, and there were no signs of a blown vein (JT determined this by looking at the pictures on page 205 of _Pre-hospital Emergency Care: Intermediate Level)_. He taped everything down the best he knew how, grabbed the end of the saline infusion line, and inserted it into the connecting hub. "Go get it, please. And tie back your hair."

When Tori had gone, JT leaned closer to his friend. "I called Tess on her burner phone. I'm sorry, man."

"Call Catherine," Vincent said, beyond all reason as the adrenaline coursed through his veins.

"Can't," JT sighed. "Tess says not to make any calls to Cat's phone. She's down at the precinct covering our asses, and that's where she needs to stay for now."

"Damn right," Tori grumbled, lugging a full length mirror into the room. It was not lost on her that she was most likely wearing one of Catherine's hair ties.

"But—" Vincent started.

"Cat can't help you right now," JT said firmly. "Not with this. Now I need you to _focus, _Vincent. I am about to operate on you, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking for or patching up. I'm going to give you a local anesthetic and make whatever incisions or stitches you want, but you're going to have to tell me what to do. Do you think we can handle this?"

Wide-eyed, Tori wiped the dust off the mirror and stood it up on the end of the bar, at Vincent's feet. Realizing what was about to happen, she tipped the hinged glass so that Vincent would be able to see his abdomen in the reflection. _God in heaven, this is real…_

Vincent closed his eyes and swallowed, trying to get control over himself. He wasn't sure if he wanted Catherine so he could give her a piece of his mind for doing this to him, tell her he'd made a mistake, or tell her he loved her; maybe all three. It was just important to him that he see her.

Naturally, the universe wouldn't let him have any form of comfort when he needed it most.

Vincent could hear his pulse and decided it was improved, but not ideal. "Check my blood pressure first," he said quietly. "And give me oxygen."

"Tori, the blood pressure cuff, to your left," JT said, looking around until he saw the oxygen mask and tubing attached to a green metal canister. "It's automated. Just slip it around his arm above the elbow like the diagram shows and push the red button. Then I need you to wash your hands in alcohol, get some gloves on, and start sanitizing his skin."

* * *

Blood. Screams.

"Breathe, Vincent, breathe! You've got to lie still!"

"Give him another local or something!"

"I can't give him anymore or his blood pressure could drop again!"

_Lifeblood. Can't lose any more._

"You need to restrain him before I nick an artery!"

"How the _fuck _do I do that?"

"What the hell?" A new voice. "What's going on here?"

"_Tess! _Get over here and help me!"

A new pair of hands, not gloved, pressed into Vincent's struggling shoulders.

"Why isn't he under?"

"He's directing the surgery."

"He's _thrashing around, _honey. He's not directing a damn thing."

_"Catherine!" _The shout rang out around the room, equal parts angry, desperate, and frightened.

Tess exchanged a loaded look with JT, then leaned over Vincent and met eyes flaring between yellow and brown in rapid succession. She'd never seen anyone so chalky pale outside of the morgue. "Catherine can't be here. She's under investigation. She sent me."

It was the truth, except for the part that was a lie. Internal Affairs would begin their mandatory investigation of the shooting promptly at eight AM, and there were a whole lot of Agents With Acronyms already beginning to tie up the phone lines, trying to get a grasp of where they needed to start their own investigations into Agent Reynolds, Detective Chandler, and possibly ADA Lowen. But Tess hadn't spoken to Catherine at all—Gabe had Cat stowed away in a secluded office to fake a really convincing story while he filled Tess in on the shooting and the arrest. Tess figured Cat would be worried about Vincent, but she didn't want to risk making too many calls inside the precinct, even on her burner phone. After JT's call, she waited until she could slip away and make it over to his place to check on the patient. She was just planning to look in on him, see if he needed any supplies, and go back to the precinct to let Cat know how he was doing.

Arriving mid-surgical horror show was the last thing she expected.

_Cat should be here dealing with this,_ Tess thought, her stomach rolling. She tried not to think about the mess of metal clamps sticking out of Vincent's abdomen and told herself that terrible smell coming from the open wound was probably normal. There was _so _much blood on the bar, the floor, clothing, staining every hand. Except Cat's, because she had to fill out some goddamned _paperwork_. _You owe me, Chandler._

"She sends her love," Tess improvised. "And she's so, so sorry. She's protecting you the best way she knows how. But right now," she placed a palm across Vincent's forehead, the way her mother did when she was sick, "you need to be still, or your guts will be all over my shoes."

Tori didn't see how Vincent could be swallowing this obvious make-believe message, but it seemed to work well enough to calm him down, at least for the moment, so she said nothing. Vincent allowed Tess to place the oxygen mask back over his face. Everyone grew quiet, letting JT work.

* * *

"I've sutured the vein," JT finally announced, exhausted, "four intestinal ruptures, and both sides of the mesentery." He had no idea one bullet could do that much damage. He had no idea what a mesentery was until a few hours ago. "All the clamps and gauze are out, and everything looks clean…I guess." By clean, he meant 'no longer leaking unknown solids and fluids.'

"You can close up," Vincent said weakly. He could hardly feel a thing, and not because of the anesthesia; the lower half of his body simply shut down to protect itself from the unrelenting assault.

"Thank God," Tess muttered, one hand still on Vincent's shoulder. She wondered if maybe he was pretending it was Cat's.

"Any word from Catherine?" he asked, as if Tess's voice had broken a spell.

"My phone died hours ago," Tess lied. She turned both her phones off shortly after arriving, worried that a drunk-dial from an old boyfriend would set her ringer chirping and make JT slice into Vincent's colon. JT and Tori had done the same. Besides, nobody wanted Vincent to be disappointed if Cat _didn't _call.

"Sun's out," Tori observed, counting the bloody gauze in the little bowl in front of her. _…Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. We only used fifteen, didn't we?_

Tess looked at her watch. "God, it's ten o'clock in the morning. How long were you operating?"

JT tried to remember what time he'd started. It didn't exactly matter if the answer was ten hours or eight or twelve, though, because his honest assessment was, "Way too long."

They weren't in a sterile operating theater; they were in a repurposed nudie bar full of dust and germs. The probability for infection was high. Worse, JT had zero understanding of avoiding nerve damage or inserting a drain. He didn't know whether he'd cut off the blood supply to something important for too long. There was nothing he could do about any of this except continue what he was already doing and hope for the best. He made a new row of careful stitches across the wound. "Vincent, do I need to use some Superglue on this?"

Vincent nodded weakly. "If you have it. Look for a tube marked bioadhesive or Bioglue. It'll look like a caulking gun."

JT stared at him. "I have Superglue."

Vincent nodded again, like this was all normal. "I need antibiotics…a gram of cefazolin every six hours…" He cast a solemn look at the mirror's reflection of the door, willing it to open, and covered his nose with the oxygen mask again.

"I have to go to work," Tess announced.

"Seriously?" Tori almost sneered, reaching for the iodine, gauze, and medical tape as if to say, 'We're not done here.'

"First rule of staying under the radar: don't attract attention," Tess replied, not allowing Tori to get under her skin. "When a cop fails to show up for work with no explanation, people notice." To Vincent, she said, "Get some rest, big guy. I'll be back later."

Addressing JT in a quieter, altogether different voice, Tess said, "You did good."

JT recognized this for the glowing praise that it was and flashed a small smile in return. "Thanks." He consulted another book before plunging a syringe into a brown bottle of fluid. Morphine.

Tori could read their faces well enough to be quiet and let them have their moment. She was only waiting for JT to tell her there was no more to do so she could either run out for meds or collapse on the sofa.

The minute Tess was out the door, she turned on her work phone to call Cat—if either of their phone records were subpoenaed, there would be nothing unusual about Cat getting a call from her partner during working hours.

_6 Voice Mail Messages_

1:19 AM: "Hey, it's Cat. Where are you? Gabe said he talked to you a while ago."

2:31 AM: "Tess? Why is your phone off? Did you go home? Do you think you can do me a quick favor? Call me back."

3:11 AM: "I know this is asking a lot, but can you please go check on him? I don't think he wants to hear from me."

4:08 AM: "I'm still working on this report. If you wake up soon, can you please go make sure he's okay?"

5:32 AM: "Hey, it's me. I'm finally on the way home, and it might be the sleepiness talking, but I think I have a tail. I'm due back at the precinct at twelve. Call me if you hear anything."

8:15 AM: "Detective Vargas, this is Sergeant Jacobson from Internal Affairs. I understand you and your partner had a late night last night. Can you come see me when you get in today? My office is on the fifth floor. I'll be here until five PM."

_Damn it._

It only took a moment for Tess to decide what to do. She tapped her screen.

"Tess?"

"Don't leave your place, and don't make any calls. I'll be right there."


	4. Unauthorized Care

**A/N: Thank you, everyone, for the reviews! I treasure every one.**

* * *

Unauthorized Care

"Christ!" Catherine shouted, rushing around the house, trying to find her boots. Up until thirty seconds ago, she thought Vincent wanted nothing to do with her. Which was not a good excuse _at all, _and she knew it. "Why didn't someone call me? I'd have been there hours ago!"

"How many different reasons do you want me to name?" Tess replied, yanking a boot out from under the couch. "Let's start with 'you don't have a burner phone anymore, and your work phone can legally be confiscated as evidence by whoever investigates you.'"

"Like that would have mattered." Cat snagged the boot from Tess's hand. It would have mattered quite a bit, in fact; she just didn't care right now because she felt guilty and frightened.

"Then how about the two guys parked in front of your building with their eye on your door?" Tess snapped.

Catherine paused. She thought she was just imagining things when she saw a pair of headlights follow her home. It wasn't like Internal Affairs to put guys on her this early into a standard shooting investigation.

"Antennae low on the rear window and govie plates peg 'em as Feds," Tess informed her, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "But they weren't glued to any earphones, and there weren't any observation vans around. I think they're just watching you until they can get a warrant to do more."

_Reynolds must already have given a statement, or at least part of one. _Catherine sighed. "I can slip a federal tail."

"On a good day, sure," Tess replied, looking her adrenaline-fueled partner up and down. "But you're about ten minutes from falling asleep standing up. I don't think you should go in for your IAB interview like this, either. They'll catch you in a lie, easy."

"Then what do you suggest?" Catherine asked, sinking into a chair. Her head was starting to hurt, and she was going to have to take some caffeine pills before she went anywhere.

Tess pondered Cat's question in silence. She had an answer, but first…

"Promise me something."

Cat didn't know where this was going, but she felt too tired, jittery, and confused to play guessing games. "Sure."

Tess leaned forward. "None of your 'humanity' crap when you talk to Vincent."

"What?" Catherine shook her head, as though Tess had spoken a foreign language. "What are you even talking about?"

"I'm serious," Tess insisted. "He did something terrible. So did you. You two are going to have to work that out, but not today. Today you're going to be there for him, and you're not going off on his lost humanity like it's a shirt he keeps losing in the wash. I spent the last nine hours holding his hand while he supervised his own surgery without anesthesia. All he wanted the whole time was to see _you._"

Catherine felt like Tess had punched her in the gut. "I had to—"

"I know," Tess cut her off. "Believe me, I know what you had to do. But we're not talking about you, we're talking about Vincent. I'm not Keller's biggest fan by a longshot, but after what I saw…" Tess looked away, shaking her head in a vain attempt to clear away the gory memory. "It wasn't like the time _I _shot him. He wasn't just miraculously okay after twenty minutes. It was painful, and ugly, and demoralizing, and it should have been your burden to bear, not mine or JT's or Tori's."

Catherine's eyes widened in surprise. "Tori was there?"

Tess turned back to her friend, suddenly angry. "Don't even start on that crap right now. Tori's not the bad guy here. All she did was help save Vincent's life."

"I didn't mean—"

"My point," Tess barked, "is that you need to cut your judgmental BS and dredge up _your _humanity instead of worrying about everybody else's, or so help me, I will kick your ass from here to Avenue D."

"You think I haven't had that conversation with myself?" Catherine said defensively. "Why do you think I haven't slept? What makes you think I care about that now?"

"You have a bad habit," Tess responded, "of suddenly caring about philosophical crap at the worst possible moment. This can't be one of those moments. Nobody wants to hear it. You gave up the right to pull the humanity card when you pulled the trigger."

Catherine closed her baggy eyes. "I asked him to choose," she whispered. "Killing Reynolds or saving _us_. And at first I thought, 'I can't believe he didn't choose _us._' But when I shot him…I can't say I chose us either."

"Look," Tess sighed, "I'm not saying I would have done it differently. Situation like that, too many emotions, no time to think—training kicks in. That's what it's _for._ Just like when his Beast thing kicks in; it's automatic. It's a wonder you tried to reason with each other at all."

"I guess," Catherine frowned, rubbing her temples to ease away her headache. Somehow it hadn't occurred to her that relying on her academy training was _not _the same as engaging in the higher order thinking she believed her badge stood for. It really wasn't, though; as an agent of social control, Catherine was herself under someone else's control, and behaved according to _their _order of thinking. She had been conditioned to follow an institutional process that someone well above her pay grade decided was acceptable and therefore a non-deviant use of deadly violence. She'd have been in plenty of trouble for _not _taking the shot, for deviating from her conditioned response.

Vincent had been conditioned to be an instrument of violence and social control, too. Just a little differently than her, without his full knowledge or consent, by someone else. _By her parents. _

"We can't go back and change what happened," Tess reminded her friend, recognizing Cat's _oh-God-I-screwed-up _face. "All you can do is figure out how to go forward from it—but not right now." She stood up. "Right now, you're going to put on my coat, my hat, my scarf, and my sunglasses, and you're gonna leave your work phone here and take my burner. Grab any antibiotics you have laying around. Cash, too." Withdrawing a set of keys from her pocket, she added, "Take my car. It's in your garage downstairs, visitor's lot."

Overcome, Tess rushed to her partner, throwing her arms around her in a grateful hug. "Thank you." She pulled back, smiling wearily. "You have the ugliest car."

"Old jalopies don't have built-in GPS tracking devices," Tess smirked. "You need to get rid of that damn Kia. Now get your crap and get out of here. I'll cover for you at the precinct."

* * *

JT sat in his favorite armchair, a cold bottle of water pressed to his forehead. But instead of facing the television, he'd turned his chair toward the bar to keep an eye on his friend. Tori was out scavenging for medical supplies from Vincent's boat. He hoped she wouldn't take too much longer; Vincent really needed those antibiotics.

The sound of a car pulling up scared him—Tori couldn't have made it back this quickly unless she hadn't gone to the boat at all. And that screechy engine…Tess's car? Wasn't she at work?

"JT," a familiar voice called from the doorway, "where's—_oh my god._"

"Cat," JT sighed, standing up. She wasn't his favorite person in the world right now, but it was still a relief to see her.

Crying.

Shaking.

All but flying to Vincent.

_She should have flown over here a lot sooner. Where the hell has she been all morning?_

"What is he doing up here?" Cat demanded, pressing her hands to Vincent's pale face, his shoulders.

_This isn't right, _she thought. When she'd been shot, even though part of her treatment had taken place on a heap of gravel in the middle of a deserted road, she'd been taken to a hospital with a reclining bed, medicine, disinfectant, and something to wear. Vincent was practically naked and lying on a bar. JT had covered him with a thermal blanket and propped a pillow under his head, but still, he was _on a bar._ And _oh my god is that blood on a tube of Superglue? _"Vincent?"

"I gave him some morphine to help him sleep," JT said, his voice as rough with exhaustion as Cat's. He hadn't slept at all since yesterday; neither had Tori. "And he's up there because we were afraid to move him after the surgery." He went around to the back side of the bar and pressed the red button on the blood pressure device. Cat watched as a small section of Vincent's blanket puffed up. JT picked up an ear thermometer, the kind used on children.

"I brought meds and bandages," Catherine said weakly, passing JT an oversized handbag. "Some Cipro and amoxicillin, Tylenol with codeine, my sister's hydrocodone from when she had kidney stones…pretty much my whole medicine cabinet."

"Thanks," JT replied absently, putting the bag down and looking at the blood pressure reading. "Ninety-eight over sixty-eight." He wrote it down in a small notebook, along with Vincent's pulse, temperature, and the time.

"Is that good?" Catherine asked hopefully. The smell of bleach irritated her nose, and she realized that JT must have cleaned up Vincent's blood. She saw an orange biohazard bag off to the side, nearly full of stained rags.

JT didn't look up. "I'm not sure. It seems kind of low." He glanced over at the IV drip. A bag of blood fed into the line along with the saline. Tori's blood, in fact. They'd gone through all of Vincent's blood bags quickly, and Tori was the only possible donor match. "Kind of low."

"What can I do?" Catherine grasped one of Vincent's hands, careful not to disturb anything around him or apply too much pressure.

Finally JT looked at her, and his expression was startling: infuriated, resentful, and totally _disgusted_. Catherine let out a small gasp, but said nothing. She waited to hear whatever JT might feel the need to say, no matter how awful. Seeing him, she understood: he'd spent an ungodly number of hours wrist deep in his best friend, for no other reason than because Catherine had chosen to save a terrible person who, as far as everyone else was concerned, wasn't worth saving. At least, that's how she imagined JT must see it.

So it came as something of a surprise when he only said, "Stay there with him and wait for Tori to get back. Check his vitals like I did every twenty minutes. Wake me up if his blood pressure drops below ninety over sixty, or if anything bad happens."

JT disappeared down the hall, leaving Catherine alone with Vincent. She stared after him for a moment, then turned back to her lover. As carefully as she knew how, Catherine lowered her head until her face rested on his shoulder and laid her arm across his chest. He wasn't quite as warm as she remembered, but his pulse and his breath were familiar and comforting. She tried not to close her eyes.

In her years as a police officer, Catherine had fired her weapon at human beings in the line of duty on twelve occasions, resulting in the deaths of eleven people and the injury of nine others. Some cops went twenty or thirty years without ever firing on someone, but she'd shot twenty suspects in six years. Outside of work, she'd also fired upon and killed or injured Muirfield agents so many times that she had simply stopped counting. The first time she killed someone, her soul went to a dark place, and she had nightmares for weeks. After that, the ones who died had simply been bodies in the morgue, while the ones who lived were either perps awaiting prosecution or faceless Muirfield nobodies she might have to fight again later. Gallows humor and callousness became emotional imperatives. That was how she, along with many cops and soldiers, had to think in order to be able to sleep at night and smile at their families in the morning.

Not once in all that time had Catherine ever sat with a recipient of one of her own bullets while his body recovered. Until today.

_"I'm sorry," _she sobbed, over and over.

* * *

An hour later, Catherine was dealing with a new problem: Tori had returned carrying two enormous black duffel bags and an ice chest, and she didn't look especially happy. Both women had a powerful urge to cuss each other out. Neither had the strength for it.

"About time you got here," Tori snarled. "He's been asking for you since last night." It was difficult admitting that out loud, when all she wanted to do was tell Catherine she had no right to be there and send her packing. "Well, don't just stand there. Some of this stuff needs to be refrigerated. Where's JT?"

"Asleep." Catherine didn't come here to argue with this woman. Tori had been there for Vincent when Cat had not, and that stung, but Cat had no one to blame for it but herself. However, her last power nap had been over thirty hours ago, and she'd been running on no sleep for much, much too long even before that, trying to keep up with and clean up after all the chaos that Vincent and Reynolds seemed to generate for her. Reality was beginning to blur with vague imaginings that she thought must be her mind's attempt to dream. Her hands trembled like an old woman's as she opened the ice chest.

Tori noticed. "Leave it," she said. "I'll get it. You empty the bags."

"No, I've got it."

"There's glass in there. You'll break something."

"I won't."

"Catherine, stop," Tori said sharply. She surveyed Cat's ashen face, puffy from crying, and heard her heart pounding. "Christ," she sighed. Being a Beast didn't make her a completely heartless bitch any more than being human made Catherine a flawless angel. "Go lay down. I'll stay up with him."

"The hell you will," Catherine heard herself say, even as she released the ice chest and unsteadily shifted over to one of the duffel bags. _Clothes, clothes, laptop, underwear, this stuff should go in Vincent's room. _She stood up and dragged the bag toward the hallway, carving a zig-zag path into the rug. _Did I say that first part out loud?_

"If you want to have it out now," Tori snapped, "we can do that. But it won't help Vincent."

"Well, that's one thing we can agree on," Cat grunted, knowing and hating how foolish she must look, trying to move luggage twice as big as she was, like a bell hop.

"I'm not stupid," Tori said, trying to stay calm. "I know he loves you. Even if I don't like it, or _you_, I can accept it. But he's the closest thing to family I have left in the world, whatever that even means anymore. I'm allowed to be pissed off that you shot him to protect the man who tried to have us killed."

Catherine dropped the bag and stood up straight, managing to restrain herself from spitting, _Hey, new girl with Stockholm Syndrome. You don't get to claim he's your family two weeks after he used you as Beast bait so he could kill **your **father in front of **you**. _That was too low a blow, and it ignored Tori's perfectly valid point. Nobody had asked to be in this position. They just _were_.

So Catherine replied instead, "Everybody is allowed to be pissed off at me. Even _you. _I can handle that, because I deserve it. But all of you have to get in line, even Vincent, because the person most furious with me is myself."

"Good," Tori said darkly. "At least that gives me a reason to respect you. Don't expect me to cut you any slack over it, though."

Catherine and Tori stared at each other in a moment of silent female communication. _Truce achieved. _"I have to check his vitals again," Cat announced. "Wake up JT and tell him what you found."

* * *

"It's not here," JT groaned, ready to pound his head into the wall.

"How can it not be here?" Tori hissed, sorting through tiny bottles.

Catherine was loosely aware of the argument…or shared panic…or whatever was going on behind her, aggravating her headache. It was getting really hard to keep up with anything not right in front of her.

Vincent was right in front of her. Asleep. She held his hand and stroked his hair and wished it could be enough.

"I took every bottle of medicine on his boat."

"He said cefazolin. None of these are cefazolin."

"Try spelling it with a cee!"

"It _is _spelled with a cee!"

"Vincent," Catherine whispered drowsily into his ear. "I'm here. I love you, and I'm never leaving."

"Can't we just force-feed him the antibiotics Catherine brought?" Tori asked

"One, he can't digest anything," JT snapped, "and two, every antibiotic doesn't kill every kind of germ. He had surgery, not a sinus infection."

"There's got to be _something _here you can give him."

"I'm looking!"

Shivering, Catherine pressed her face onto Vincent's warm cheek.

His _very_ warm cheek.

"Vincent?" Catherine called, louder now. She touched her lips to his forehead.

_He's burning up!_

"Vincent!" Catherine shouted, her overworked adrenal gland sending a fresh supply of epinephrine coursing through her veins and setting her heart aflutter once more. "Wake up! Please? Please wake up!" She grabbed for that ridiculous ear thermometer, and got a reading in five seconds: 104.2.

All talk ceased as Catherine flung Vincent's blanket away and peeled back the dressing covering his wound. The stitches were clean, but his abdomen was beginning to swell.

While the room around him dissolved into crisis mode, Vincent's mind melted away into fevered, narcotic dreams of a stolen life.


	5. Red Tape

**A/N: Thank you for the great feedback! In case it's unclear, the sections below done entirely in italics are flashbacks/dreams.**

* * *

Red Tape

_Vincent lay in bed, cradled by the motion of the bay. Most nights he stared at the ceiling for ten minutes, reflecting on the day's activities: research and exercise on a dull day, body count and cleanup on an active day. Corpse disposal? Check. Bleaching DNA evidence? Check. Fingerprint wipe? Check. Every box was ticked off, one by one. It didn't feel good, nor bad. It was simply productive. Efficient. Functional. This internal record-keeping was part of his conditioning to be the perfect soldier, and he did it without fail, or he could not sleep at all._

_Condor, his superior, seemed to be satisfied with his progress; he certainly paid Vincent well for it. Well enough for Vincent to eat anything he felt like eating, have a nice place to live, and keep everything in order. Sometimes he read true crime novels when he was bored, or masturbated if his body had the need, or brushed up on medical advancements that weren't reuploaded into his brain after the memory wipe. Sometimes he went to a firing range or practiced suturing, because knowing the facts of these things was not a sufficient substitute for experiencing them, and recreating skillset experiences was acceptable to his superior. That was all there was, and it didn't make Vincent happy or sad, and he didn't feel he was accomplishing some lifelong dream. There would be time for that someday, maybe, when his work was done, **if** it was ever done. So he reflected on his daily bullet points, because this was how he knew he was fulfilling his purpose, and what else was there in life to think about with no memories of anything to look back on with joy or regret?_

_Yet sometimes, after the list had been recounted, he turned over and buried his head under the pillow, and his nerve endings remembered a comforting scratch across his back. Once, only once, he woke from a dream of an arm thrown around him, and how warm and safe it made him feel, like everything wrong would be okay and someday things would get better._

_These things were not on his list. They were not productive or functional. They did not matter. They belonged in a hole, with other useless things. He did not require comfort. He did not require someone else's arm to feel safe. He did not require warmth. Nothing was wrong. Everything was functioning normally._

* * *

Gabe Lowen found himself under an enormous amount of pressure today.

On top of the _multiple _investigations being launched into the events of the previous night—especially the enquiry into how and why an Assistant District Attorney had gone undercover as part of an unauthorized sting on a federal agent without a signed warrant or documentation of probable cause—and on top of the fact that Chandler was suffering from "acute exhaustion" and had not shown up for work today, further delaying giving a required statement, Gabe still had to deal with the ongoing responsibility of having to assign detectives to today's new crimes.

For the most part, the different divisions had their lieutenants assigning their own sergeants and detectives as needed, and ADA Lowen didn't have to deal with things like the gang-related triple homicide or the latest fatal head-on collision. True, the federal presence had set the rumor mill flying, and everything was running _slower _instead of _faster _as everyone frantically brushed up on their closed case files in a misguided collective attempt to justify and protect their careers. That, however, was middle management's problem, not Lowen's. The best part of bureaucracy was automatic delegation…so long as you weren't on the receiving end. But in spite of the day's political concerns, Lowen was still directly responsible for Special Cases, so he had to juggle an actual productive duty between the careful maintenance of his web of protective lies (that would probably fall apart the minute someone compared it to Reynolds's statement), a barrage of phone calls from a number of federal agencies, and a personal visit from one extremely irate mayor.

When he heard about a break-in and theft at a veterinary clinic, he almost kicked it back to Robbery. That is, until he learned an otherwise credible witness described the suspect as a crazy, facially deformed, red-headed lady with eyes like fire who kicked in a metal door. The suspect allegedly stole the entire supply of antibiotics and a $10,000 blood analysis machine in broad daylight.

Detective Vargas was assigned that case immediately; her IAB interview was temporarily postponed. Gabe gave her the official copy of Detective Chandler's report, which made it clear that she, Vargas, had no prior knowledge of or involvement in the Reynolds case. He also gave her one final warning: assigning this new case would probably be his last act as her boss. A team of investigators from the Justice Department were waiting for him in a conference room, and someone else was likely going to be appointed as an interim captain over the 86th precinct. Someone pushing a very different agenda.

Tess stopped at a bodega on the way to her crime scene and purchased a new burner phone. She used it to send a single text message to another burner:

_Don't make calls. Don't go to work. Don't go home. _

* * *

_"Day 12, Subject has responded well to combination electro-shock therapy and ketamine injections, though an adjustment of the dose may be required…"_

_Vincent slumped in his chair, naked, grateful for the reprieve offered by his Torturer's incessant need to pause and record things at regular intervals. That's how he knew this hellhole was being funded by a rich government—too much record-keeping. This much, he still remembered, was different than being kidnapped by insurgents in Afghanistan, who had no particular scientific agenda and only recorded things like this to send in to news agencies._

_He was beginning to build up a tolerance to ketamine, something he was trying to keep secret. Everyone had stopped looking like they were made of cardboard, but he still felt the helplessness of falling into a deep, terrible hole and being unable to lift a limb to climb out…_

_"Vincent," the Torturer said in that detached voice, "I'm going to show you some pictures."_

_Vincent didn't like picture time. Sometimes he was supposed to remember a face, and sometimes he wasn't, but he was always required to try. They knew when he wasn't trying. They had Punishments for everything._

_"Who is this?"_

_"Edith Ramirez, Chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission."_

_"Who is this?"_

_"I don't know."_

_"Wrong answer."_

_"I don't know! She…she looks like me." She had a kinder face than his. He squirmed in his chair, trying to scratch a sudden itch on his back._

_A pause. A glance at a monitor._

_"Very well. Who's this?"_

_"She's…" He didn't want to answer, but he didn't want the needles in sensitive places again, either. He inhaled and looked at the Asian woman's face. "She's someone's mother."_

_"Whose mother?"_

_An image arose in his mind. No. They couldn't have this. It was precious. "I don't remember."_

_"Whose mother, Vincent?"_

_A rooftop. A kiss. Dark hair and bright eyes. "I don't remember."_

_"I don't believe you."_

_"It's the truth! I don't remember!"_

_"I have your readout right in front of me, Vincent. You remember something."_

_"I don't know who it is!"_

_The Torturer frowned. "You remember enough. Prepare to deliver midrange shock…"_

* * *

Between the three of them, JT, Catherine, and Tori managed to rig up a stretcher out of plywood and get Vincent into bed without tearing his stitches. This wasn't a matter of making him comfortable. Vincent had developed shaking chills to go with his fever, and JT was afraid he would shake himself right off the edge of the bar.

Absent the equipment necessary for proper blood analysis, JT had no choice but to give Vincent a broad spectrum antibiotic. The good news was Penicillin G was among the vials of medicine taken from Vincent's place. The bad news was that Vincent, employed as a government assassin, hadn't foreseen or prepared for an incident in which he would be suffering from post-surgical sepsis without a skilled government medical team to provide the proper care. There wasn't enough penicillin to last more than a day, and JT couldn't just make more out of nothing.

Vincent was still unconscious, so his decisions had to be made by three very sleepy people with little to no medical training, no support, and no resources. JT considered a visit to his university's medical research lab, which would require jumping through a lot of time-consuming hoops to get the analysis approved. He'd be last on the backlogged waitlist, he'd still have to run a long test, and then he'd have to steal the proper medication, since the university wasn't in the business of selling medicine to people who might actually need it. Tori couldn't access her wealth, as she'd been declared dead after her home was bombed; she was in favor of robbing the expensive hospital that once charged her $80 for a single aspirin. It was Catherine who suggested a veterinary clinic, knowing it was less likely to be heavily guarded in the middle of the day but would still have what they needed. Veterinarians often used medications also approved for human use, including antibiotics. A vet clinic or supplier probably would have sold them a huge bottle of the medicine they wanted for $20 _without a prescription_—not that Catherine knew that—but they wouldn't just let an amateur back-alley surgeon borrow their machines to analyze cross-species DNA. The trick here was to rob an animal hospital that wasn't likely to get a rapid police response. Preferably in a precinct that had its hands full today with bigger problems.

Tori had given Cat a look of approval before she left for Harmony Veterinary Health Center.

Catherine wondered if that was the last intelligent idea she had left in her. All she was good for at the moment was applying cold compresses, cleaning the occasional mess, and checking vitals to mark the passage of time. The notebook pages slowly filled with her increasingly uneven scrawl, and while every number meant something, Catherine began to feel that the act of recording them was just mindless protocol, vigilance without real purpose. If Vincent's blood pressure went up or down or his fever spiked again, what was anyone supposed to do about it that they weren't already doing? Vincent was the only one here qualified to do anything in this insane situation, and he was stoned out of his mind.

He'd begun to talk in his sleep. Nothing that made any sense, of course, but Catherine decided to view it as a good sign. If he was talking, at least he wasn't brain dead. Feeling as though she was in a blurry, waking dream herself, Catherine began to reply to Vincent like they were carrying on a perfectly normal conversation. She didn't think it would help him any, but neither did writing down his temperature nor holding his hand.

"Lie down," a deep voice said behind her.

Catherine jumped a little and turned to see JT leaning against the door frame. "Fever's gone down a little. 102.3. That's good, right?"

"Lie down," he said again. "With him. Might as well."

Cat waved the notebook around in answer. JT ventured into the room and took it from her without reading it. "His IV and his wound are both on his left side. Go around to his right, and _lie down._"

Feeling every bit as shaky as Vincent looked, Catherine rose from her chair and did as she was told. JT watched her stumble and grab onto things to stabilize herself as she moved around the room. A new worry that he didn't have room for tugged at him. "You look like hell. When's the last time you ate?"

Catherine gently lowered herself onto the bed, the orange afternoon sun streaming through the window behind her. It hurt her head to think of the answers to questions, any questions. "I don't remember."

"I'll bring you some snacks."

"No thank you." She didn't think she could keep anything down.

JT wasn't going to waste his energy arguing with her. The bulk of his concern was directed elsewhere: Tori had been gone a long time and hadn't called. He grabbed a water bottle and some crackers from the kitchen area and brought them back to Vincent's room, thinking only of what he could possibly do if Tori got caught.

The sight in front of him made JT pause. Vincent still looked awful, but his size belied his weakness. Catherine looked so small beside him. Except for her eyes…large and shining and frightened and sad. She was haggard shadow of the strong, determined woman he knew.

"Do you think," she asked, "he'll be able to forgive me?"

"Maybe," JT answered, because he thought it was true. The old Vincent would have; they new one might, too.

"And you?"

JT shook his head, an uncertain _no_. "Ask me again when we get through this."

"Would it matter," Catherine asked him quietly, "if I said I was sorry?"

Looking at her obvious state of contrition, JT was tempted to say that it did. But looking at Vincent mutter and shiver beside her, with his oxygen mask put aside because there was only one tank and they'd decided to conserve it, and a plastic sheet and some towels under his ass in case of rectal bleeding…

"Apologies are just words," JT replied, and left the room before he could say anything else.

Alone with Vincent again, lying in the same bed where they'd made love and promises, Catherine refused to grant herself the refuge of sleep. She snuggled closer to him, telling him of hopes and dreams that made no sense and could never happen, children they would never have, homes they would never live in. Her heart ached and grew heavy in her chest.

* * *

_"Vinny," a kind-faced woman with a sweet voice murmured, "it's not the end of the world."_

_Vincent thrust his head deeper under his pillow. The unmistakable sound of that one really depressing Radiohead song—set to repeat—moaned at him._

_"She broke my heart, Mom."_

_"I know, sweetheart." There was a sigh, and Vincent felt a comforting scratch on his back, his favorite scratch. "I know she did, and I know it feels like you'll be sad and alone forever. But you're going to be okay. There will be other girls when you're ready."_

_"Not like Josie MacIntosh."_

_"Better than her," his mother promised. "One day you'll meet the right girl, and things will happen the way they're supposed to."_

_"Don't tell me you're still pushing the Alex thing," Vincent groaned, shaking his head, then popping it out from beneath his pillow to give his mom the surly teenage version of The Look._

_Of course, with two other sons having gone through this before, Mrs. Keller was immune to that Look. "Maybe Alex," she said soothingly, "and maybe someone else. The important thing is to be open to the possibilities."_

_Vincent sighed and closed his eyes, rolling over to make room for his mother. She stretched out beside her son, her baby, and threw an arm across him so he'd know she would always be there. "I promise," she whispered, "someday there will be someone special, and you'll be so in love with her, you won't know how to keep it all in."_

_The world shifted and swirled, and Vincent was on a rooftop, kissing the most remarkable woman he'd ever met. He pulled back to look at her dark hair and bright eyes, and his heart was so filled with joy, he thought he might explode._

_"I am so in love with you."_

Vincent opened his eyes.

A slender arm with swollen joints hugged his chest, and a particularly loud heartbeat resounded through him from the warm, familiar body at his side. Fighting the edges of pain and his own drugged, sluggish movement, Vincent managed to turn his head toward the silhouetted face beside his.

"Catherine?"


	6. Claim Denied

**A/N 1: Final chapter. Thanks for reading. Your reviews have been treasured.**

* * *

Claim Denied

"JT! JT, where are you?"

It took a full three seconds for the dozing JT to realize the hoarse voice yelling for him was Vincent's.

JT Forbes had never been so grateful to hear his best friend's voice in his life. He made a mad dash to the bedroom, his tired mind telling him a beautiful lie: Vincent Is Conscious equals Vincent Is Cured. He flicked the light switch. "Oh god, you don't know how glad I am to see you awake! How're you feeling?"

Vincent's body was tensed up, and he gave out the occasional grunt of pain. His attention was directed to the sleeping woman beside him. Half her face was buried in a pillow, her cheeks were streaked with the faded trails of her tears, and her hair was a god-awful mess. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful sight Vincent could have hoped to see.

"Catherine?" he croaked. "Wake up."

"Let her sleep, man," JT said quickly. "She's exhausted. We need to worry about _you._"

Reluctantly, Vincent turned away from Catherine and looked up at the ceiling again. He wanted to say 'I'm fine. I just need to heal myself.' But he _wasn't _fine, he _couldn't _heal himself, and he felt nauseous. "Bucket."

JT handed him a trash can and cautiously pressed a pillow against the wound while he waited for the gagging to pass. "Does it still hurt? Do you need more morphine?"

"Not yet," Vincent groaned, reaching for the unopened bottle of water to rinse his mouth out. "How bad is it?"

"Infected. We should probably look at it."

"Not right now," Vincent sighed, not quite ready to face that yet. "How long has it been?"

JT checked his watch. 6:20 PM. "Eight hours since we finished your surgery." He blinked, feeling puzzled, then looked at the dark sky and city lights shining through the curtain. "I guess I fell asleep." He had intended to sit up with Vincent while Catherine slept, but she kept talking and talking, and he was so mad at her that he couldn't be in the same room…

He took off his glasses and stared at the floor. "I need to give you the next dose of penicillin. We couldn't find cefazolin."

"We'll figure it out. Where's Tori?" Vincent asked. She'd worked as tirelessly as JT to save his life—he owed her a debt of gratitude. "Where's Tess?"

"Tess went to work. Tori is…" JT paused again, then began to call through the house. "Tori? You back yet?"

"Come on, Catherine," Vincent whispered, "wake up. I need to talk to you." He had so much to say, and he needed to say it before the pain got the best of him and he had to take more drugs.

JT, feeling the familiar anxiety begin to bubble up, snatched up his phone and tried to call Tori. Straight to voice mail. He tried Tess; Catherine's purse vibrated in response. Progressing from anxious to panicked, he went through Cat's bag and checked the phone.

_4 Unread Text Messages_

_12:40 PM from Unknown Caller: Don't make calls. Don't go to work. Don't go home. _

_1:30 PM from Unknown Caller: Working vet clinic robbery. Trying to stall._

_2:04 PM from Unknown Caller: Car accident referred to me. Fatal. Stolen drugs & vet equip recovered by uniform, cannot get to you. Crash i__nvestigation will take hours. __GPS analysis backlogged. Phone destroyed. _

_5:48 PM from Unknown Caller: ADA under federal arrest. You are wanted for questioning. Am being watched. Get V out of town. No more msgs from this phone._

"No," JT whispered. Nobody had turned on the TV all day, but now he grabbed the remote and clicked on the Six O'clock News. There it was on the recycled footage from this afternoon, splashed across the screen in high definition: Tori's car. JT couldn't tell if she'd been trying to use evasive maneuvers or if she just fell asleep at the wheel. It didn't matter. There was a Mac truck where Tori's upper body should have been.

JT stared at the television, then the phone, trying to process several things at once:

Tori was dead.

No medicine was coming.

Catherine was wanted. Cops would be looking for her.

Tori was _dead._

Gabe and Tess couldn't cover for them anymore, other than to keep their mouths shut.

Vincent was sick and Tori was dead and there was no one left to bring supplies and _no medicine was coming._

_Cops. Cops will be coming._

"Vince!" JT yelled, running back to the bedroom. "Cat! We gotta go!"

He wasn't prepared for the sight that greeted him: Vincent, naked and barely covered, half risen on the bed, shaking Catherine like a rag doll. Blood seeped from her nose, staining the pillow. "Wake up, Catherine!"

"What the hell?"

"She's in a coma!" Vincent pulled the blood pressure cuff off his own arm and tried to affix it to Catherine's. "Help me!"

JT struggled to disentangle the thick rubber tubing from Vincent's plastic IV line. "This can't be happening," he heard himself mutter. "We have to get the hell out of here _now."_

Vincent didn't listen as JT told him what was going on with Tori and Tess and Gabe, and he barely even noticed the intensifying pain in his side or the strange _ripping_ sensation inside him, like a zipper popping a few teeth at a time. He had enough focus for one thing, and one thing only; the rest could wait.

He checked Catherine's eyes and listened to her labored breathing. Her face was swollen—it had been swollen at the scene of the accident, too, and he'd assumed it was from the airbag impact. She smelled like too much adrenaline, like _fear_. "Give me the oxygen. How long has she been like this?"

"I made her lay down a few hours ago," JT answered, grasping for the oxygen mask, opening the tank valve. "She looked like she hadn't slept in days, and she was stumbling around."

_Days. _Knowing Catherine's stamina, that was entirely possible. And knowing her tenacity, she wouldn't care that it was medically dangerous, if she even knew.

"Has she had headaches or blurred vision? Chest pain, vomiting, nosebleeds? _Anything?_" Vincent shifted his weight as he held the mask over Catherine's face. "Didn't she get checked by paramedics after the crash?"

_Rip._

"I don't _know._ She didn't say anything, just that she couldn't remember eating." The blood pressure machine beeped. "Two hundred over one-thirty," JT read off, scared of numbers that high, "pulse is—"

"Arrhythmic," Vincent finished, hearing the rapid beating. His diagnosis was swift and incomplete. "Hypertensive emergency and acute renal failure. How long has she had high blood pressure?" _How long was she killing herself searching for me and protecting me? _

"I don't think she knew," JT guessed. "She didn't bring meds for it. I don't know if she ever saw _any_ doctor…"

There was an ending to that sentence JT didn't want to say out loud, but Vincent heard it all the same: _...except for you._

_No. _Vincent shook his head violently._ No, no, no. _"She needs a sodium nitroprusside injection right now, or her other organs will start to fail." Vincent tried to roll up Catherine's sleeves and look for an injection site. His motions felt heavy, off-balance, and wrong.

_Rip._

"We don't have that," JT whispered, looking from Vincent to Catherine in disbelief. "I checked all the meds Tori took from your boat. We don't have it."

"Look for nitroglycerine pills or clonidine transdermal patches." Vincent had to think around the distraction of his abdominal spasms and the last remnant of drugs in his system. He knew he was missing something. "Even some aspirin." Without _some_ kind of medication to bring Catherine's blood pressure down, the only other option was controlled blood-letting.

"Vincent, Tori is dead," JT said urgently. "Tess says we have to get outta town. We can take care of Cat in the car, but we gotta go _now._"

Vincent heard it then, a sound in Catherine's pulse that shouldn't be there. He sat up and looked at JT with eyes that flared yellow-gold, a contrast to the absolute terror on his face.

_RIP._

"Get an IV, morphine, and my surgical tools. _Now._"

* * *

When a team of federal agents raided a former gentleman's club a few days later, they weren't sure what to make of what they found.

Amid some fairly stylish home furnishings and a laboratory-grade refrigeration unit, they found a metal trash can filled with the charred remains of used medical supplies, shredded clothing, and a biohazard bag. The rug showed evidence of heavy things being dragged and wheeled to the door. There were no surgical instruments, but there were empty bottles of analgesics, blood on the pillow and mattress, more blood on the floors.

"Photograph everything, then bag it and tag it," was all the lead investigator had to say. He had stopped feeling anything a long time ago—it made him a better agent, he thought. He surveyed the things around him only in the context of how they tied in to whatever it was Agent Reynolds and the Assistant District Attorney weren't telling him. Their statements didn't indicate they were in cahoots with each other—they openly _hated _each other—but they were obviously protecting someone. The only common denominator was that they both asked about Detective Chandler, who was still at large.

Thus far Chandler had made no contact with her worried partner. The GPS in her car revealed she'd visited this location more than once, but not in several days. Her work phone was missing and could not be activated remotely. While it was possible that Chandler had destroyed it, the investigation had not yet ruled out interference from Detective Vargas. With any luck, this crime scene would yield new leads.

The forensics team followed their instructions and procedures as they had been trained to do. Every object was treated as either inconsequential or evidence of a crime, not signifiers of a well-loved home. Not evidence of a series of injustices, or the denial of the right to exist, or lives torn apart. Lovingly selected artwork was ignored; the unopened six-pack of beer and the popcorn bucket received no comment; a favorite hair comb was just a source of DNA. The technicians who would analyze hair and blood samples thought themselves to be cogs in a system that served justice; they did not understand that they were rivets in the iron cage that trapped, marginalized, even actively sought to destroy a group of individuals trying to build a better life in a world that wasn't structured for them.

It didn't matter that the Justice Department was looking to prosecute Agent Reynolds; they served the same side. They thought they had different ends, they thought they used different means, but they had the same effect: to take.

No one working the case gave a thought to the quietly nourished hopes, joy, and suffering that had gone on in this place, the failed fresh start, the goodbyes no one had a chance to say, or the well-being of the people who had lived and died here, except to wonder where they were.

Nobody saw that a small, bitter fight against decades of high-level manipulation and deeply embedded power abuse inevitably culminated in the blood on the floor. They couldn't see that all roads lead upstate, across the Canadian border, to two bodies sharing an unmarked grave in the heart of Charleston Lake Provincial Park, tended by a broken-hearted, transient biochemist living in an ugly, crumbling old car.

* * *

**A/N 2: This story is dedicated to my sociology professors, who inspired me, and to Max Weber, who saw what we were coming to a hundred years ago, and without whose work I could never have found and explored the hidden truths _Beauty and the Beast _has to offer.**


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